Samsung Teases Folding Galaxy F Smartphone Launch

This week Samsung’s 10th-anniversary Galaxy S10 transitioned from lookingveryspecialindeed to a potential game-changer. But now Samsung has revealed details about another new Galaxy smartphone, which was meant to be a game-changer from the start…

Fighting back against reports that its screen-folding Galaxy F had become vapourware, Samsung has made a thinly veiled announcement that the phone will launch next month.

In a new tweet, @SamsungMobile told its 12.2 million Twitter followers that the company’s San Francisco developer conference on November 7th would witness “The crossroads between the present and the future”.

This riffs on terminology previously used by Samsung Mobile Division CEO DJ Koh who has repeatedly referenced how the Galaxy F will be the future of smartphone design, but also a highly practical and real-world device for people to use today. Koh also teased CNBC last month that the Galaxy F would launch at the developer conference and proclaimed: “It’s time to deliver”.

Of course, reading between the lines, there is one clear downside to this news.

In short: mass market, mainstream devices are not usually launched at developer conferences. This is something we were tipped off about when Samsung chose a key Galaxy F components supplier “because they could meet small supply orders”.

Folding Galaxy F conceptPhone Designer / NieuweMobiel

Consequently, while the Galaxy F may well represent the future of smartphones today it is likely to be a vision which takes time to grow. All of which means the vast majority of Samsung fans are going to have to settle for the Galaxy S10 instead.

I am an experienced freelance technology journalist. I have written for Wired, The Next Web, TrustedReviews, The Guardian and the BBC in addition to Forbes. I began in b2b print journalism covering tech companies at the height of the dot com boom and switched to covering co...